Chris Hayes Tries to Educate Morning Joe on the Constitution

Remarkable exchange between Joe Scarborough of Morning Joe and Chris Hayes of The Nation. Chris was on discussing the ongoing issue of the Christmas Day Bomber and whether or not he should have been given a Miranda Warning, this conversation taking place within the larger discussion of whether or not President Obama is handling the "war on terror" appropriately.



One moment in particular struck me as an obvious effort on the part of Joe Scarborough to - per the Republican methodology - build a strawman to argue rather than actually discuss the issue.

Joe: "Did we Mirandize Nazi prisoners of war?"
Chris: "I don't know if we Mirandized Nazi prisoners of war."
Joe: "Noooooo. I mean we've never done this before. I know Bush did it, but that doesn't make it right."

Why is this important? As Joe very likely already knows, there was no Miranda warning during the Nuremberg Trials. In the period 1945-1946, a full 20 years before Miranda, a series of military tribunals tried 22 of the most important captured Nazis and then later a second series of trials for "lesser" war crimes. These trials were not 1) in the United States, or 2) under the United States justice code, thus any question of Miranda or Constitutional protections are beside the point.


Just as an example of what a military tribunal is supposed to look like, the Nuremberg Tribunals were established by the three allied powers (Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States) and the legal guidelines were established within the documents of surrender of Germany. Its jurisdiction was limited to Axis countries (Germany and its allies), for war crimes only, and only crimes commmitted after the official start of the war (Sept. 3, 1939).

 The Miranda Warning became embedded in Constitutional law on June 13, 1966 when the case of Miranda v. Arizona was decided. Ernesto Miranda was convicted of robbery, kidnapping, and rape, to which he had confessed during interrogation. He later claimed that the confession was made under duress. Miranda was ultimately convicted of these crimes, but because his later trial was fair and included witness testimony and evidence, that conviction was upheld. Escobedo v. Illinois in 1964 ensured the right to counsel.

So, another strawman. No, the Nazi war criminals were not Mirandized. We did not have the Miranda warning in 1945. The Nuremberg trials took place in Europe, the legal basis was agree to by the three allied powers, and coordination was conducted by the four Allied nations (France, no longer occupied was included). Each of the four countries provided one judge and one prosecutor. So, no one country's constitution, justice system, or military court applied.

Oh. By the way. Scarborough is a lawyer and before becoming a talking head, was a Congressman, so I think he knows that he was making it up.

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k

Dodd Ridicules "Genius" in the White House

Maybe he's just trying to save his seat, but in an interview with several bloggers, Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn) said what I think many of us have wondered.

"I don't know who the genius was in the room that night when they were discussing this," the Connecticut Democrat said of the four torture documents declassified by the Obama White House. "But if you are going to make the decision to release the documents, I presume every one of us here would the have a follow up question, which is: Well, what are you going to do about it? And if the answer is nothing, we are just going to release the documents.... Some of us in the room would say, 'Well wait a minute, you have a problem. If you are going to release them then you are going to have to answer the next question, what are you going to do with them?'"

It isn't enough just to release the information. Yes, we must have full disclosure. We must know what was done in our names, what is the full truth of what happened. But we are not asking for retribution. We are asking for justice. If no one is above the law, if we are truly a nation of law, then we must follow the law wherever it leads us. President Obama has done much to repair our image in the world. The respect that President Bush squandered is slowly being redeemed. But if the crimes of the past administration are allowed to go unanswered, then we are bound to repeat them.

The whole point of Nuremburg was to ensure that what happened in Germany under the Nazis never occurs again anywhere in the world. Permitting torture for expediency's sake begins the slippery slope and we become no better than those we fight.

You can read Sam Stein's piece in the Huffington Post here

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k